To be fair, OMC isn't exactly buying completely into the
run-of-the-mill banking game. Its debit card is part of a larger
effort by the group to create a nonprofit banking services
cooperative. The co-op hopes to create an alternative to the
for-profit banks by establishing a full-service financial
organization (including checking accounts, loans, and financial
education) that is controlled by the “users,” not shareholders.

“We launched [the Occupy Money Cooperative] because we felt that
the way the for-profit banking industry operates in the U.S., it
intrinsically exposes the U.S. economy to risk and makes us
vulnerable to the consequences but, above all, fails many
millions of Americans who don’t have bank accounts and are denied
banking services,” founder and director Carne Ross, of the
nonprofit advisory group Independent Diplomat,
told Forbes.

The OMC works like a credit union in that it is democratically
owned by its members. Credit unions, however, have restrictions
on who can be members. Occupy Money Cooperative will be open to
the public.

If this sounds a whole lot like a bank dressed up in a Guy Fawkes
mask to you, you aren’t alone. In a Reddit AMA in August, Ross
answered questions
from a skeptical, and often antagonistic group of Redditors
who asked whether or not Ross and the cooperative were simply
appropriating the Occupy brand for their own devices. Ross was
unequivocal in his assertion that Occupy and the cooperative have
the same principles and are committed to the same goal.

Ross revealed during the AMA that the OMC will have regular
member meetings, discussions, and elections for board members. It
will also have “completely open accounting, while protecting the
personal information of customers/members.”

The group is currently looking to fundraise $900,ooo to get the
cooperative off the ground. In keeping with their promise for
transparency, the cooperative has detailed where that money will
go.